Latest news with #Israelis
The Journal
2 hours ago
- Politics
- The Journal
At least 49 people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza as ceasefire prospects inch closer
AT LEAST 49 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, the health ministry there has said. Strikes by Israel began last night and continued into this morning, falling on regions of northern Gaza, including at the national Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, where 12 people were killed. Six others were killed by strikes in the south after a strike hit their residential tent in Muwasi, according to hospital staff. The wave of deadly strikes come as the US and Qatar claim prospects of a ceasefire are near. Last night, US President Donald Trump said he was hopeful a truce could be agreed by as early as next week. Mediator Qatar has called on Israel and Hamas to seize the opportunity for peace in the region. 'If we don't utilise this window of opportunity and this momentum, it's an opportunity lost amongst many in the near past. We don't want to see that again,' a spokesperson for the Qatari government said today. Gaza has been under siege by Israel since an attack by Hamas in October 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. Over 56,000 Palestinians, including civilians, have been killed in the Israeli government's counteroffensive to the attack. Roughly 50 hostages, taken by militant group Hamas during the October attack, remain in Gaza. Their families in Israel are hopeful that US involvement will secure a ceasefire , as a previous truce saw dozens held captive released before Israel began strikes on Gaza once more. The UN has condemned an aid blockade that has been placed on the region in recent months. A US-Israeli-backed aid distribution organisation has been set up in Gaza, but other NGOs refuse to cooperate with the group over impartiality concerns. Hundreds of Palestinians waiting for aid at the sites set up by the organisation have been killed by Israeli troops in recent weeks, becoming a near-daily occurrence. An Israeli newspaper this week reported that soldiers are routinely ordered to fire at civilians . Advertisement Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been riding on a wave of support for Israel's war in Iran. However, many western nations have recently condemned his government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank. A recent review of the EU's trade deal with Israel found that its actions in Palestine and its occupied territories breached human rights obligations included in the agreement . European leaders decided to delay any action to suspend the deal this week , however. Ireland has been amongst the European nations which have continually condemned Israel's actions in Gaza . Government leaders, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris, have recently described Israel's offensive as 'genocide'. The Irish government has recently begun the legislative steps to introduce a ban on trade of goods with illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza , citing a preliminary opinion by the International Court of Justice. The government has been criticised by opposition for excluding the trade of services in the legislation. Harris promised this week to include services in the legislation at a later date , claiming further legal advice is required first. Harris and Martin have both said that the introduction of the legislation will spark further action by other European nations. But European leaders cannot come to a unanimous agreement on taking action against Israel for its breaches of the EU trade agreement. They this week deferred a decision until a special leaders' summit in Brussels next month. With reporting by AFP and Press Association. Need more information on what is happening in Israel and Palestine? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to navigating the news online. Visit Knowledge Bank Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
Straits Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Six Israelis detained for attacking soldiers in West Bank: Military
Palestinian mourners attend the funeral of three people killed on June 25 in Kafr Malik. PHOTO: AFP Six Israelis detained for attacking soldiers in West Bank: Military JERUSALEM - Six Israelis were detained for assaulting soldiers near a town in the occupied West Bank where clashes with Palestinians erupted earlier this week, the military said on June 28. Soldiers went to disperse a gathering of Israelis near the central West Bank town of Kafr Malik overnight from June 27 to June 28, the military said in a statement. 'Upon the arrival of the security forces, dozens of Israeli civilians hurled stones toward them and physically and verbally assaulted the soldiers, including the Battalion Commander,' it said. 'In addition, the civilians vandalised and damaged security forces' vehicles, and attempted to ram the security forces,' it added. 'The security forces dispersed the gathering, and six Israeli civilians were apprehended and transferred to the Israel Police for further processing.' Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military declined to say whether those arrested were residents of Israeli settlements in the territory, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The military referred the query to the Israeli police, which was not available to comment. In a separate incident on June 25, the Palestinian health ministry said three men died in Kafr Malik in an attack by settlers. AFP journalists saw several hundred people gather for the three men's funerals on June 26. The Palestinian foreign ministry alleged 'official complicity' by Israel in June 25's attack, in a message on X. 'Israeli occupation forces prevented ambulance crews from reaching the wounded and obstructed civil defense teams from entering the village for several hours, allowing fires ignited by the settlers to spread and destroy dozens of homes,' it said. The Israeli military did not respond to a request by AFP to comment on those claims. A military spokesman told AFP its forces intervened on June 25 after 'dozens of Israeli civilians set fire to property in Kafr Malik' and a 'confrontation' involving 'mutual rock-hurling' broke out between Israelis and Palestinians. Referring to action by the Palestinians, the spokesman said: 'Several terrorists fired from within Kafr Malik and hurled rocks at the forces, who opened fire toward the source of fire and the rock-hurlers.' Five Israelis were arrested, the military added. AFP Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Indian Express
6 hours ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Hidden Stories: How Pune nurtured the ‘parachute woman of India'
When India announced the launch of Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, Pune-based Smita Yeole was out of the country. What she saw stirred her in a deeply personal way, for Smita was in the business of manufacturing a product closely linked to war: parachutes. Since 2004, Mumbai-based Oriental Weaving and Processing Mills, which was founded by Smita's late father, Vishwanath Chalke, has been making parachutes that are used for dropping flares, bombs, drones, cargo, missiles, and humans from aircraft. 'There are hundreds of varieties of parachutes,' says Smita, the managing director of the company, adding that there are underwater parachutes and parachutes that drop 16,000 kg tanks from an aircraft in high-altitude regions such as Leh. Oriental supplies parachutes to the armed forces, and in 2009-10, it became the first private Indian company to export parachutes internationally. While the company manufactures more than 50 products, there is no website listing these. 'I cannot disclose details because these are customer-specific and related to a country's defence. I have a lot of customers who are against each other, so I cannot share one person's matter with another,' she says. The entrepreneur supplies parachutes to the Israelis and the UK, among others. Smita lives in a ground-floor apartment full of comfortable furniture and artefacts from around the world. The drawing room looks out at a converted outdoor dining space, and the sounds of the kitchen meander through conversations. As Smita talks about enjoying cooking and gardening, the domestic everydayness is a striking contrast to the high-action life-and-death scenarios in which she has made her mark. A Mumbai girl, Smita, who calls herself a 'textile person', had worked in a few companies before joining her father's business. 'I started at the bottom of the ladder,' she says. In 1988, Smita had an arranged marriage with Ajay Yeole, a metallurgist and gold medal-winning College of Engineering, Pune, alumnus, who worked at Tata Motors and came to Pune. 'For one year, I was sitting at home and doing nothing. I told my husband, 'Boss, I cannot stay at home like this. You better do something or I will have to keep shuffling between Bombay and Pune',' she recalls. Ajay took it upon himself to start a small aluminium foundry in Uttam Nagar in 1990. While helping him, Smita learned the foundry business from the workers, the consultants and the day-to-day working. By 1997-98, it became the top aluminium foundry in Pune. Smita brought the same attitude to her father's business in 1999-2000. Blessed with a hands-on husband and supportive mother-in-law who took care of their two sons, she began to shuttle between Mumbai and Pune. 'I spent Mondays, Tuesdays, half of Wednesdays, and half of Fridays working with my husband at the foundry. Thursdays used to be for my father's textile business in Mumbai. On Saturdays and Sundays, I used to be at home,' she says. Smita's father had pioneered making parachute fabric in India in the 1970s, after the India-Pakistan war. 'India was importing those fabrics, and my dad indigenised these,' she says. She was visiting the Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment in Agra with him when a director told her, 'You have made this fabric. Why don't you stitch it up for me?' This was the first time that a defence lab was asking somebody outside the lab, or a non-defence production company, to make parachutes. Smita, who read drawings like a book because of her foundry experience, took up the task. The initial challenges included finding tailors to gaining knowledge. Besides fabric and cords, a parachute needs tapes, cotton yarn, webbing and metal parts that are sourced from all over India. All components have to be sent for testing to the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies before they are applied to the product. Gradually, the company established vendors and pipelines and fine-tuned its systems. Today, the company operates out of three locations – Gujarat, where the thread is woven; Mumbai, where the fabric is processed with a centralised lab and head office; and Agra, where the parachute fabrication is done. 'We bagged orders one after the other. I have taken transfer of technology for the SU-30, i.e. the Sukhoi aircraft, the LCA aircraft, the Hawk and the MiG, among others. I make all these parachutes for the defence. Earlier, I used to supply only to India, now I supply globally,' she says. Smita regularly attends exhibitions abroad, meets people, learns and incorporates the developments in her work. Once, former Union minister Smriti Irani had referred to Smita as the Indian woman manufacturing parachutes. Yet, at meetings with suppliers in India, she says, she often meets people who want to 'speak to Mr Yeole'. Smita, who is also the vice-president of the prestigious Independence-era organisation, The Synthetic and Art Silk Mills Research Association, which is linked to the Ministry of Textiles, is optimistic about the future. 'Earlier, parachute fabric was made on an ordinary loom; now, it is made on water jet looms. The quality has improved manifold,' she says. AI has also made it 'easy to assimilate data', she adds. 'An abiding challenge is the availability of the yarn for making the fabric. It is all imported. When India becomes self-sufficient in that, the country will be on solid ground,' says Smita. Ironically, Smita has never used a parachute herself. 'Maybe…one day I have to do it. It is on my bucket list,' she says. Dipanita Nath is interested in the climate crisis and sustainability. She has written extensively on social trends, heritage, theatre and startups. She has worked with major news organizations such as Hindustan Times, The Times of India and Mint. ... Read More
NBC News
6 hours ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Can Iran secretly build a nuclear bomb without being caught by Israel?
Iran's top nuclear scientist was driving to his country house with his wife on an autumn day four years ago. As he slowed down for a speed bump, a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a nearby pick-up truck fired a volley of bullets, killing him instantly, Iranian authorities said. The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of a dormant nuclear weapons project known as Project Amad, illustrated in brutal fashion how deeply Israel had penetrated Iran. That vulnerability has only been exposed further in recent weeks, with Israeli air strikes killing several other scientists believed to be involved in Iran's nuclear work. Iran's political leaders now face a dilemma. After the heavy U.S. bombing of their nuclear sites and air defenses, they can strike a painful compromise with Washington and abandon their uranium enrichment program, or revive the secret weapons project masterminded by Fakhrizadeh. Unlike other countries that were able to develop nuclear weapons in secret, Iran cannot assume it will be able to keep its work hidden. Israel has demonstrated repeatedly it can evade Iran's security, uncover its clandestine nuclear activities and hunt down senior figures in the military, former intelligence officials and experts said. 'Iran's principal challenge in pursuing a covert pathway is going to be keeping it hidden from U.S. and Israeli detection,' said Eric Brewer, a former intelligence official now with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit focusing on global security. 'That's the key challenge, because both countries, particularly Israel, have demonstrated an ability to penetrate Iran's nuclear program,' he added. 'And Israel has demonstrated an ability to use kinetic force to take it out.' The Israeli air force has effectively wiped out Iran's air defenses. For the moment, Iran cannot protect any target on its territory -- especially suspected nuclear sites -- from a U.S. or Israeli bombing raid, former intelligence officials said. 'The Israelis have complete intelligence dominance over Iran,' said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former career CIA officer and now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. 'If they see something emanating as a threat, they will take it out. . .That could mean military strikes. It could be covert action.' Iran has already tried once to build an atomic bomb under the veil of secrecy. It had a covert nuclear weapons project more than two decades ago, according to Western intelligence agencies. But its cover was blown in December 2002, when satellite photos emerged showing an enrichment site in the city of Natanz and a heavy water plant about 200 miles away in Arak. Iran has denied it ever had a weapons program. Archival documents stolen in 2018 by Israel's Mossad spy agency, which the U.S. says are authentic, showed detailed plans to build five nuclear weapons. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons project in 2003. At that point, the secrecy around the project had been breached and Iran had reason to be anxious in the wake of a U.S. invasion in neighboring Iraq. Since then, Iran maintained what it said was a civilian nuclear program. Iran's uranium enrichment and other nuclear work gave Tehran the potential option to pursue an eventual weapon if it chose to go that route – what arms control experts call a 'threshold' nuclear capability. Stolen blueprints If the regime chooses to race towards a bomb, it will be calculating that nuclear weapons will discourage any adversary from trying to stage an attack or topple its leadership. And it would be following a familiar path taken by other countries that successfully pursued secret bomb projects, including North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel. The Israeli government kept the Americans in the dark about their nuclear weapons project for years. In the 1950s, French engineers helped Israel build a nuclear reactor and a secret reprocessing plant to separate plutonium from spent reactor fuel. Israel's government to this day does not officially confirm or deny its nuclear arsenal, saying it will not be the first to "introduce" nuclear weapons in the Middle East. India's nuclear program also began in the 1950s, with the United States and Canada providing nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel for purely peaceful purposes. India agreed to safeguards designed to prevent the reactors and fuel from being used for weapons. But India secretly reprocessed spent fuel into plutonium in the 1960s, building up fissile material for a nuclear weapon. By 1974, India carried out its first nuclear test, code-named Smiling Buddha. Pakistan built its bomb with the help of nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist who stole blueprints and other information on advanced centrifuges while working at a nuclear engineering firm in Amsterdam. Khan later was linked with distributing nuclear weapons technology to Iran and North Korea among others. Khan's assistance in the 1990s proved crucial for North Korea's program. The Pyongyang regime also bought technology and hardware abroad through front companies or on the black market, according to U.N. monitors. It was America that helped Iran launch its nuclear program, before the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy. During the Shah's rule, through the U.S. 'Atoms for Peace Program,' the United States provided nuclear technology, fuel, training and equipment to Iran in the 1960s, including a research reactor. Now Iran likely has no need to turn to outside partners for technical know-how, experts say. Still, the regime will have a daunting task reconstituting whatever is left of its nuclear program. Every known nuclear site in Iran was targeted in Israel's air campaign earlier this month. And then last week the U.S. launched an attack on three enrichment sites using 14 'bunker buster' 30,000-pound bombs and more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles. The CIA says key facilities were destroyed and the nuclear program was 'severely damaged' in the strikes. Despite the unprecedented damage, which is still being assessed, it's possible Iran may have the technical means to relaunch a weapons program – including enriched uranium, centrifuges and access to tunnels or other underground sites, some arms control experts say. Iran's entire stockpile of highly enriched uranium has yet to be accounted for, and it has an unknown number of centrifuges in storage that were not located at the sites bombed by Israel, NBC News has reported. Iran's most significant technical obstacle, however, could be producing uranium metal. Iran only had one known site where it could convert uranium into a solid metal state, and Israeli air strikes destroyed it in Isfahan. Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon without such a facility, and it's unclear if the regime has a secret uranium metal product plant elsewhere. Technical hurdles aside, the decision whether to build a nuclear bomb ultimately will be shaped by political considerations rather than technology or logistics, according to Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. 'It really is a political decision not a technical one," Lewis said. "They still have a lot of capability left." After coming under a withering aerial assault that demonstrated Israel's air superiority, Iran may view nuclear weapons as the only way to defend itself and preserve the regime's survival, according to Marvin Weinbaum, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank and a professor at the University of Illinois. 'Iran has every reason now, based on what's just happened, to say we've got to have a bomb, [and] we'll be treated differently if we do,' Weinbaum said. Officials in Iran's regime have long debated whether to develop nuclear weapons, and its policy over the past two decades appeared to strike a compromise, giving Tehran the option to go nuclear if circumstances required. The question for Iranian officials is whether nuclear weapons will help ensure the regime's survival or endanger its grip on power, regional analysts said. Looming over Iran's decision is the threat of Israeli espionage and air power, potentially catching Tehran in the act of rushing to produce a bomb. 'It will be interesting to see whether the regime buckles down and gets serious about it, or whether their operational security remains as terrible as ever,' Lewis said. 'They have been so careless.' President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to hold talks on a possible agreement with Iran in coming days to try to halt its uranium enrichment in return for sanctions relief.
New Statesman
11 hours ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Israel's hollow victory
Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/AFP The war that began on 7 October 2023 – of which the '12-day war' with Iran was merely one episode – has upset much of the received wisdom that had emerged in the Middle East over the past few decades. As is often the case with politics in this region, these disruptions revolve in part around the policies, personality, and prospects of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister. Some developments were distinctly to his disadvantage: many had previously believed that Hamas was interested in stability and in the slow but steady economic recovery of the Gaza Strip, and that it would be easily and swiftly defeated if it ever initiated an escalation. This paradigm shattered on 7 October with Hamas's attack – at enormous cost, first to ordinary Israelis, and then to many, many more Palestinians. It also nearly derailed Netanyahu's remarkably resilient political career. But other long-held beliefs – once seen as ironclad constraints on his room for manoeuvre – appear to have shattered as well. Chief among them was the idea that Israel couldn't sustain a war longer than four to six weeks due to the economic toll and its lack of strategic depth. Yet the current war has now lasted nearly 20 months and counting – longer than all of Israel's previous wars combined. Another belief was that Israel couldn't withstand significant military casualties without the public turning against the war. Yet Israel has now lost more than 900 soldiers, with little discernible effect on public support for the war effort. There was also the assumption that neither the West nor neighbouring Arab countries would tolerate a brutal conflict resembling Putin's destruction of Grozny or Sri Lanka's assault on Tamil autonomies – marked by immense casualties, well-documented war crimes, and advertised and exercised genocidal intent. Yet, despite some feeble expressions of discomfort from certain quarters, in terms of actual response, much of the world has accepted it without significant objection. There was no way that Israel could afford to fight more than one war at a time, and it certainly couldn't take on Hezbollah, the state-like paramilitary movement in Lebanon that left Israel bruised and reeling after their last war, in 2006. But Israel wiped Hezbollah out as a regional force, showing it has also spent the 18 years since 2006 preparing for a rematch – which, almost as an afterthought, precipitated the collapse of Israel's last traditional historic rival, Baathist Syria. And finally, it was once taken as a given that Israel could not survive a direct war with Iran, due to the Islamic Republic's vast arsenal of ballistic missiles – too numerous for Israel's missile defences to intercept, and too widely dispersed across Iran's expansive terrain. Yet during the 12-day conflict, only about 100 of the 1,000 missiles launched toward Israel made impact. Pre-war estimates presented to Netanyahu's cabinet had forecast between 800 and 4,000 Israeli deaths as an acceptable range. In the end, fewer than 24 Israelis were killed. In response, Israel inflicted a casualty toll estimated to be 20 times higher on Iran, targeting not only personnel – including senior military leadership (with some positions eliminated more than once) – but also missile stockpiles, launchers, and both the infrastructure and intellectual core of Iran's nuclear programme. The latter included the assassination of nuclear scientists, often carried out in a manner that also killed their families and neighbours. To some extent, many of these paradigm shifts are works in progress – most pertinently, the economic impact of the war and the degree to which Netanyahu's triumphalism over Iran has been justified. The Iran front alone had cost Israel $3bn in damage; the market impact and expenditure are still being calculated, but it's likely to be dwarfed by the overall cost of the war in Gaza, projected by the Bank of Israel to top $50bn by the end of the current year. It can be argued Israel's economy went off the cliff some time ago, but hasn't hit the ground yet. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's long-held dream of a joint Israeli-American regime change war on Tehran came tantalisingly (or terrifyingly) close, but has so far failed to materialise. The Iranian regime appears, for now, to be emerging more entrenched and more repressive. Iran retains much of its ballistic missile arsenal, including some of the heaviest payloads. And even if its nuclear programme has been damaged to the extent claimed by Israel and the US – a highly contested assessment – the incentives for Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon, if only as a deterrent, have increased. In other words, all of Netanyahu's original motivations for the war remain in play, in some ways more acutely than before – now coupled with the dangerous suggestion (perhaps misleading) that Israel can indeed survive a war that was once deemed apocalyptic. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Still, it is obvious that Netanyahu is aware that Israel accomplished all it could on its own, and that the momentum for open-ended American involvement in the conflict appears to have hit a ceiling – as have, reportedly, at least some of Israel's interceptor missiles, which would mean the loss in property and lives in Israel would only grow if the war escalated. And the ceasefire with Iran could collapse at any moment – for instance, by some faction of Iran's military apparatus retaliating (unlikely) or by Israel assuming it has the same freedom of action in Iran as it does in Lebanon, where it has continued to stage pinpoint air-raids and assassinations at will, despite the ceasefire being still in force (more likely). But assuming the ceasefire holds, Netanyahu now faces a number of choices: does he use the momentum of the paradigm shift to hold a snap election to secure power until at least 2029? And does he attempt to finally convert Israel's tactical military wins into a sustainable diplomatic infrastructure? Or does he attempt to instigate a new round of fighting with Tehran, this time aiming to drag America in all the way? Calling a snap election now – instead of waiting for the mandatory election year of 2026 – would force Netanyahu to confront the apparent crumbling of another paradigm. It is usually believed that in times of war, Israelis rally behind institutions and leadership, prioritising national unity over political disagreements. Few things can boost a leader's popularity more than a successful war. Yet this belief might soon be discarded too. The public has rallied behind some institutions and leadership figures: in the first week of the war, a survey by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University found that trust in the army went up from 75 per cent to 82 per cent, trust in the Air Force from 71 per cent to 83 per cent and trust for Israel's Intelligence Corps from 61 per cent to 74 per cent. Trust, meanwhile, in Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir from 56 per cent in May to 69 per cent in June. But trust in Netanyahu's government only went up by eight points – from 21 per cent to a miserly 29 per cent. Netanyahu himself did a little better, going from 26 per cent in May to 35 per cent as the war started. In another survey by pollster Agam Labs, the war cabinet and the government ranked lowest on a scale of trust from 1 to 6 (at 2.18 and 1.73, respectively), while Netanyahu himself scored a dismal 1.54, only slightly more trusted than the most extreme far-right figures in his cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich (1.46) and Itamar Ben Gvir (1.24). Far more consequentially for the question of snap elections, polling done for Israel's Channel 12 News found that while Netanyahu's Likud party would gain four extra seats compared to pre-war surveys – remaining the largest party at 26 seats – these seats would likely be won at the expense of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, whose support Netanyahu still needs, than any opposition party. The all-important 'bloc' calculation remains the same: if elections were to be held this week, the parties that currently make up the coalition would only get 49 seats out of 120, while the opposition parties – even discounting the Palestinian-majority parties almost invariably excluded from coalition agreements – would get at least 61, meaning the next prime minister would not be Benjamin Netanyahu. In a way, this would be a fitting coda to Netanyahu's lifelong attempt to cast himself as the new Winston Churchill in a fight against (in his imagination) Iran's Nazi Germany. After all, Churchill, who led a much more convincing victory in World War Two, lost the premiership to Clement Attlee immediately thereafter. But there is also a third scenario, hinted at by the leak – and the reactions to it – of the ambitious peace deal concocted by Trump and Netanyahu to end the war much more conclusively. According to the leak, revealed by the unwaveringly pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom newspaper and not denied by the prime minister, the war in Gaza would wrap up within two weeks. The hostages would be released, the surviving leadership of Hamas would go into exile, and a group of states worldwide would offer visas and asylum to Gazans willing, in a cynical sense of the word, to emigrate. Four Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and two yet to be disclosed, will take up governance and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia, Syria and other states would then join the Abraham Accords, normalising relations with Israel. For its part, Israel will acknowledge some openness to a two-state solution – pending some unspecified 'reforms' to the Palestinian Authority, which all sounds like the palest possible imitation of statehood for Palestinians. In exchange, the United States will recognise a degree of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, though it remains unclear whether this would be structural or symbolic.. To anyone genuinely interested in securing Israel's uncontested and permanent control over historic Palestine, along with regional pre-eminence and acceptance by other Middle East countries, this 'peace deal' is a dream come true. But to those committed to Israel's own version of 'from the river to the sea' – total annexation with maximum expulsion of Palestinians – this represents a historic opportunity squandered (Smotrich has already denounced the report, telling Netanyahu he has no mandate to negotiate for any kind of Palestinian state). This creates an opening for Netanyahu to revert to a far more familiar pattern than the past 20 months of relentless escalation. If reports of the deal are accurate, and if the other putative parties are genuinely willing, the prime minister could afford to discard Smotrich and Ben Gvir and instead invite the centre-right opposition parties into government – Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, and even Avigdor Lieberman. This would not only reconstitute a more traditional Netanyahu coalition – one in which he plays centrists and right-wingers against each other, tacking with the political winds rather than remaining bound to a rigid ideological course – but also allow him to enter the 2026 election year as both a successful war leader and a peacemaker. Best of all, from Netanyahu's perspective, is that he would then have both the mandate and the timeframe to finalise his authoritarian reforms – from politicising the judiciary to effectively strangling civil society. He would also gain, at the very least, four more years in which to launch a second war with Iran if necessary – and this time, ensure that America is fully dragged in to fight it all the way to the end. [See also: Imperial calculations] Related
